EDITORIALSWe support
tax extension Early voting started Tuesday in Cabot for a sales tax extension that supporters say is the remedy to some of the problems that have prevented the city from being the biggest and best bedroom community it can be. [FULL
TEXT]

Senate helping
payday lenders Arkansas voters in approving Amendment 89 to our state’s Constitution in 2010 voted to voluntarily raise the interest rate charged on consumer loans. Senate Bill 900 would override the will of the voters and, based on recent history, ultimately pave the way for out-of-state lenders to set up shop in Arkansas and roll back hard-won consumer protections. [FULL
TEXT]

Still doubtful
on steel mill Gov. Beebe, the legislature, the state Economic Development Commission and anyone else who entertained the idea that the state could not pass up the chance to help investors build a steel mill in Mississippi County should now take a deep breath and a step back. The taxpayers may get a good return on the $125 million they are about to put up for the steel mill, but that is looking unlikely. It certainly is not assured, and virtual assurance ought to be the standard for committing so much of the state treasury. [FULL
TEXT]

Obamacare
in March The critical issue of the 2013 session of the Arkansas legislature, believe it or not, is not abortion, birth control, guns, tattoos or voter ID cards but the federal offer to insure medical care for some 250,000 low-income workers, 4,000 of them or more in our own community. That issue seems finally coming to a resolution, and we’re happy to report—well, good news and bad news. [FULL
TEXT]

Neville's nostalgic
doo wop CDThe Grammy Award-winning singer Aaron Neville has a nice new CD out on the venerable Blue Note label, “My True Story,” which is the New Orleans singer’s tribute to doo wop.[FULL
TEXT]

Bankers cheated militaryThe bankers who illegally foreclosed on about 1,000 military families are paying billions of dollars in fines for their criminal behavior. These bankers cheated service members and their families even if they were current with their mortgages.[FULL
TEXT]

Byrd dies, Shorter soarsDonald Byrd, one of finest jazz trumpet players of the second half of the 20th Century, died earlier this month at the age of 80.[FULL
TEXT]

Young girl asks Santa for a very special giftWhen my friend Jack Sallee was with the Jaycees in Fayetteville, they’d put an ad in the paper at Christmastime saying that for $2 you could have Santa come to your place.[FULL
TEXT]

Men who fell
from the top
to doghouseAt what point does a potential national-security scandal become more like a “Saturday Night Live” sketch in search of a punchline?[FULL
TEXT]

Tempers fly
in front of votersJacksonville Alderman Terry Sansing’s mother stood all week in front of the Jacksonville Community Center, where early voting had started Monday.[FULL
TEXT]

Showdown at Alma
key to massacrePeople in Crawford County often talk about a Mormon leader’s murder near Alma in 1857 and the slaughter of a group of Arkansans in Utah a few months later known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.[FULL
TEXT]

First and last Vietnam casualties Marine Pfc. James (Ricky) Maxwell of Center Ridge in Conway County was buried last week in Morrilton. [FULL
TEXT]

Bain invested in LR 'medical-waste' firmIf you’re wondering why Mitt Romney is distancing himself from the investment company he founded, it’s not just because he bought businesses that cost thousands of American jobs after factories closed down and work was outsourced to China and other countries.[FULL
TEXT]

Principal is walking tall at JHSJacksonville High School was in awful shape last July when Henry Anderson took over the failed school in a failed school district.[FULL
TEXT]

Diners go online
in fight over eateriesA food fight involving three Jacksonville restaurants has been simmering for months, if not years, and now has spilled over to Facebook, where the comments are as strong as the morning coffee.[FULL
TEXT]

Levon Helm, 1940-2012 Levon Helm, the drummer for The Band who passed away Thursday at the age of 71, helped open Alltel Arena in 1999 with Ronnie Hawkins, his longtime mentor, and a fellow Band member, the organist Garth Hudson.[FULL
TEXT]

You have to admire Jeff LongJeff Long, the Razorbacks’ athletic director, restored Arkan-sas’ good reputation when he announced Tuesday evening that he had fired the execrable Bobby Petrino as the head football coach.[FULL
TEXT]

A memorial honors those who served in Vietnam(This column appeared on March 4, 1987, in the first issue of The Leader. We’re reprinting the column as we mark our 25th anniversary.)
Wanda Shireman of rural Jack-sonville remembers when she heard the news that her son, Paul Jr., had died in Vietnam.[FULL
TEXT]Invaders swoop
in
at sunsetOn Saturday afternoon, children and their parents were walking down the street in Beebe’s Windwood subdivision near where blackbirds roost at night on West Center Street.[FULL
TEXT]

Young girl asks Santa
for a very special gift(This is a reprint of a previous Christmas column.)
When my friend Jack Sallee was with the Jaycees in Fayetteville, they’d put an ad in the paper at Christmastime saying that for $2 you could have Santa come to your place. [FULL
TEXT]

Shovel-ready work:
Look when you digResidents of the Sunnyside neighborhood in Jack-sonville are breathing easier now that the relocation of utility lines is nearly completed before the start of the Graham Road widening project. [FULL
TEXT]

Arkansas bluesmanleft markThe great Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime guitarist, died last weekend at the age of 80. He’d been in poor health for several years — he carried an oxygen tank with him during performances — but he was a down-to-earth character who grew up in east Arkansas before he headed for Chicago some 60 years ago. The Rolling Stones will pay for his funeral. [FULL
TEXT]

Eyewitness remembers
Pearl Harbor(This column about the late McLyle Zumwalt first appeared here on Dec. 9, 1989, and is reprinted to mark the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He died in 2001.)
Most people think of retired Col. McLyle Zumwalt as one of the organizers of Pathfinders, which trains the developmentally and physically disabled in Jacksonville.[FULL
TEXT]

Vietnam vet is in military
hall of fameLex (Butch) Davis of Sherwood was among the first 15 inductees into the Arkansas Military Veterans Hall of Fame at the Agora Center in Conway on Friday. This column appeared here in February 2007.
Butch Davis sat at a round table near the corner where the Singing Sergeants entertained in the big gym on Little Rock Air Force Base, which was honoring its top personnel at the annual awards banquet Saturday night.[FULL
TEXT]

Colonel won’t be home for ChristmasPresident Obama said Friday all U.S. troops would leave Iraq at the end of the year.[FULL
TEXT]

Designers snub
Civil War buffs Earlier this year, a couple of interior designers from Europe named Simon Davies and Tomas Cederlund came here for an episode of their show “Home Takeover” on the Oprah Winfrey Network.[FULL
TEXT]

State won’t rescue cities
like schools Cities across Arkansas are going broke in the double-dip recession. Alexander down in Saline County is questioning a former bookkeeper about shortages in two city funds.[FULL
TEXT]

Comparing pardons by governors (This column won first place in the Arkansas Press Association’s Better Newspaper contest. Winners were announced Saturday during the APA’s convention in Hot Springs. The column was published in The Leader on Oct. 19, 2010.).[FULL
TEXT]

A Murdoch News Corp.
should hire Wendi Deng Murdoch, who jumped to her husband’s defense when a British comedian threw a shaving-cream pie at the mogul yesterday, is the one Murdoch who deserves to run the beleaguered media empire.[FULL
TEXT]

Soulful sounds still amazeThe Bo-Keys are keeping the Memphis sound alive with their brash, funky music and vocal backing from great soul singers like Otis Clay, William Bell and Percy Wiggins.[FULL
TEXT]

Gutsy newspaper
goes after villainsA tenacious investigative reporter, a great editor and a courageous newspaper — Nick Davies working under Alan Rusbridger at the British Guardian — helped bring down the most powerful media company in the world: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, now exposed as a criminal enterprise, with several present and former employees facing prison sentences for hacking into cell phones and computers for more than a decade. [FULL
TEXT]

Sylvan Hills grad helps revive Memphis soundLast month in Overton Park in Memphis, the young trumpet player on stage left was blasting away with the Bo-Keys, an eight-man band that has revived the soulful sounds of Memphis from the 1960s and 1970s. [FULL
TEXT]

High school
here ranks
with DeltaThree failing high schools down in the poverty-stricken Delta received multi-million-dollar federal grants last week. So did Jacksonville High School, the only one that’s not in the Delta. [FULL
TEXT]

Arkansans praised
around the worldThe water’s receding. Most roads are open and homes are drying out. The cleanup continues as the worst flooding in decades moves south, although pockets of Arkansas remain underwater. Neighbors have helped each other cope with the disaster, although some were hurt and at least one person was killed in our area. Little Rock Air Force Base had a close brush with calamity as it survived a tornado that struck homes and several C-130s.[FULL
TEXT]

Sad to see old bridge torn downScott Fryer took his family Saturday to inspect Fryer’s Ford Bridge, which had served the rural community near Solgohachia in Conway County since 1890.[FULL
TEXT]

Bluesmen from Delta
passing onJoe Willie (Pinetop) Perkins, who was the oldest living bluesman and Grammy winner until he passed away Monday at 97, sat recently in a wheelchair in a little alcove just offstage at Stickys Chicken Shack in the Rivermarket District in Little Rock.[FULL
TEXT]

Dictator fooledby coverage?Did Fox News goad President Obama into taking action in Libya?
Every hour until the missiles started flying, Fox showed Obama goofing off: Doing everything except his job, but there was a reason to the March madness, and it had nothing to do with basketball.[FULL
TEXT]

Hate speech is protected,
court decides(The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld the right of Westboro Baptist Church members to demonstrate at military funerals. This column about the Kansas-based group, which demonstrated in Beebe nearly five years ago, appeared on Aug. 2, 2006.)
Members of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., were again busy this week picketing funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, but lawsuits filed by families who have lost their loved ones could stop the church group from taunting grieving relatives. [FULL
TEXT]

Ex-Stax chief still has soul Al Bell, the former Stax Records executive, is back in the spotlight with a new Web site, All Bell Presents American Soul Music, where you can hear classic Stax artists and new soul singers who are keeping the Memphis sound alive. [FULL
TEXT]

Minihan: No break
for wing since 9/11 Col. Mike Minihan, commander of the 19th Airlift Wing, sent off 40 airmen and a couple of C-130s into combat before the storm hit last weekend. [FULL
TEXT]

From this poor little girl, special request for Santa (This is a reprint of a previous Christmas column.)
When my friend Jack Sallee was with the Jaycees in Fayetteville, they’d put an ad in the paper at Christmastime, saying that for $2 you could have Santa come to your place. [FULL
TEXT]

Base could depend on Snyder as real friend Rep. Vic Snyder, a Democrat who is retiring from Congress at the end of the year, is getting some heat from Republicans for wasting time on the House floor to praise this community’s support of Little Rock Air Force Base. [FULL
TEXT]

Panama president
ex-UofA roommateJohn Mason, a Jacksonville real estate broker, was in Fayetteville with his wife Ien for homecoming weekend on Oct. 30, when the Razorbacks played Vanderbilt. [FULL
TEXT]

Our error given wide circulationWe’ve received lots of calls, comments and complaints over an error in Wednesday’s paper about a Christmas program in Cabot. [FULL
TEXT]

Comparing pardons
by governorDid you see Gov. Beebe’s latest list of pardons? Last week, he announced his intent to pardon a handful of small-time criminals, emphasis on small-time. [FULL
TEXT]

POWs recall their
World War ordealThe former POWs who were shot down over Romania during the Second World War arrived at the Jacksonville Museum of Military History in their tour bus a little after 11 a.m. Thursday. [FULL
TEXT]

Annexation plan: Many in area say they're against itPeople who live north of Jacksonville near Hwy. 67/167 met at a church Monday evening to fight the city’s plan to annex the area.[FULL
TEXT]

Lighthouse plans to build middle and high schoolsThe headline in Saturday’s Leader: “Cabot schools about to hit 10,000.”[FULL
TEXT]

J’Accuse: Smearing
of generalAir Force Gen. John D. Lavelle, who died more than 30 years ago, after he was falsely accused of insubordination, is a four-star general again.[FULL
TEXT]

Petraeus salutes
camp liberators It was 65 years ago Monday that Beryl Wolfson helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in southeastern Germany.[FULL
TEXT]
Marker recalls fire at Twist There's finally a marker honoring B.B. King in Twist in Cross County, where the great blues singer escaped from a fire at nightclub with his guitar and named it Lucille.[FULL
TEXT]

Justice Jim fought tough final battle Arkansas bloggers were the first with the news of Justice Jim Johnson’s suicide over the weekend. The local TV news on Sunday ignored his passing, probably because no one in the newsroom knew who he was.[FULL
TEXT]

Cabot man in raidon POW camp in 1970 Mst. Sgt. Paul Poole, who helped to liberate Americans from a Vietnamese prison camp, died last week.[FULL
TEXT]

Trial could get Muhammad
his death wishLast June, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad killed a soldier from Conway and injured another soldier from Jacksonville in front of a recruiting station in Little Rock.[FULL
TEXT]

What a little girl asked
from Santa When my friend Jack Sallee was with the Jaycees in Fayetteville, they'd put an ad in the paper at Christmastime, saying that for $2 you could have Santa come to your place. [FULL
TEXT]

Tuskegee legend
at holiday reception A tall elderly man stood in a far corner in a large banquet room at Little Rock Air Force Base on Sunday afternoon during the holiday reception hosted by the wing commanders. [FULL
TEXT]

Gas shut off
as hospital bills pile upA couple in Beebe have been without heat for several months after the natural-gas company took out their meter because they were not paying their bills.[FULL
TEXT]

Huckabee our worst governor?Who is Arkansas’ worst governor? Is it Orval Faubus, who defied federal authorities i in 1957, when he wouldn’t allow nine black students to attend Central High School in Little Rock? He brought shame and ridicule on the whole state, but at least no one was killed. Or is Mike Huckabee our worst governor ever?
[FULL
TEXT]

For complete news coverage, buy The Leader today!

April 6, 2013

Gov. Mike Beebe and Open Arms Shelter board member Rhonda House smile at Thursday’s dinner in Cabot.
Beebe speaks on issuesIN SHORT: He says in interview he’s working well with local legislators. [FULL TEXT]

City defends demolitionIN SHORT: Owner has threatened a lawsuit after rental home was leveled. [FULL TEXT]

Williams, English against expansionIN SHORT: Coverage for working poor passes in Senate; House uncertain. [FULL TEXT]

Neville's nostalgic doo wop CD IN SHORT: The Grammy Award-winning singer Aaron Neville has a nice new CD out on the venerable Blue Note label, “My True Story,” which is the New Orleans singer’s tribute to doo wop. [FULL TEXT]

Mayor receives signed ball from Red Devils
Members of the Jacksonville Red Devils’ boys basketball team, as well as athletic director Jerry Wilson (left) and girls coach Katrina Mimms (right), presented Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher (center) with a basketball signed by members of the JHS boys and girls state champion basketball teams at the city council meeting on Thursday. Pictured with the mayor are Wilson, from left, senior Red Devils Brandon Brockman, Keith Charleston, Justin McCleary and Khaleel Hart and Mimms.
Chili’s restaurant on Main Street in Jacksonville will donate 15 percent of all sales from 4 p.m. to close on Tuesday, April 9 to help purchase state championship rings for the girls and boys basketball players.

Coach backs Goodwin on NBA IN SHORT: High school coach says it’s best for his former player to leave Kentucky after just one year. [FULL TEXT]
Cabot girls get league victory IN SHORT: Lady Panthers stay perfect in conference play with win over Bombers. [FULL TEXT]

Mt. Home gets sweep of Panthers IN SHORT:Cabot unable to capitalize with runners in scoring position, lose two. [FULL TEXT]

Bombers steal two at home IN SHORT:Cabot gave up two tough losses Wednesday at MHHS. [FULL TEXT]

IN THIS ISSUESubscribe to The Leader for these and other stories found in the printed edition:
• Officials remain hopeful about North Belt 'Plan B'
• Crawford devotes day to Cabot
• Austin woman dies after being run over
• June competency hearing
• District says it wasn't hacked
• Couple planning May 11th wedding
• Neville's nostalgic doo wop CD
• District petition drive kicks off
• Shelter dinner stirs childhood memories

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